


Horizontober 2020

by SaltysScribbles



Category: Horizon: Zero Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Some selections from a monthlong challenge!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 18:02:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 10,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29986755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltysScribbles/pseuds/SaltysScribbles
Summary: Some selections from a monthlong fan-challenge!
Kudos: 3





	1. Illusion

It starts about five minutes after she deals the final blow to the new machine.

She’s finished digging an offending, spiny projectile out from under the edge of her bracer, where it’s become lodged during the fight, and is stripping the carcass. The parts are fairly standard, as far as she can see; heart, core, lens, a few armor pieces that look as if they might be useful…

And, finally, a cannister full of a purplish liquid, linked by soft tubing to the spike launchers that had given her such a difficult time during the battle.

Varga pokes her head up from the machine’s other side, a spatter of coolant on her cheek.

“Find anything interesting?”

Nodding and holding up the cannister, Aloy scrabbles back to her feet.

“Yeah. Take a look at-”

Abruptly, the world tilts crazily, and the air almost seems to boil in front of her eyes. Reeling sideways, she clutches at the machine’s chassis for balance.

“Wh-!”

The shift catches Varga’s attention, and her head pops up over the side of the machine again, frowning.

“What was that? Are you all right?”

She doesn’t actually have an answer for that; her head is starting to feel light and unbalanced, and shaking it to clear it only intensifies the sensation, and worsens the spiraling of the world around her.

_What the hell…?_

The machine twitches, and, alarmed, she whirls to drive her spear into it, letting the canister fall into the grass at her feet. Varga lets out a little yelp of alarm, and backs away from the impact site, swatting an errant piece of armor plating that leaps in her direction out of the way.

“Whoa! What are you doing?!”

“It moved! Get away-!”

The Oseram tinker picks her way around the carcass toward her, hands raised. 

“Aloy! It’s fine! It’s very dead, I promise!”

Again, the machine’s armor pulses and flickers, and she twists the spear, digging it around in the insides of the chassis, panic beginning to eat at her insides.

“Then why does it keep _moving_!?”

Varga’s hand closes lightly around her wrist, trying to tug her frantic spear-thrashing to a stop.

“It’s not moving at all!”

She can feel the grip, steady and warm. But when she turns to face her companion…

Aloy’s stomach lurches, and she inhales sharply.

“How is your face doing that?”

Varga lifts an eyebrow… which sends the entire side of her face lifting up and spiraling around.

“Doing what?”

It looks painful, or at the very least, like it would feel awful. But Varga doesn’t _seem_ to be distressed in the least.

Not physically distressed, anyway.

“You really can’t feel all that moving it’s doing?”

Varga peers at her closely, brows drawing together in concern (and crossing over each other into a nauseating waver.)

“…I think you should just… take it easy for a little bit. Sit down. Close your eyes.”

She tries. She really does. But the seething motion won’t _stop_ , and she turns over onto her side in the dust, curling in on herself. The ground wavers and ripples like the surface of water, and the limbs of the trees overhead seem almost to reach out like claws, ready to rake at her.

When the world finally stops reeling, her face is pressed hard into the dirt, and her head is _throbbing_. Varga’s voice sounds like it’s coming from a long way off.

“Are you done being completely out of your mind?”

Nodding aggravates the pain, and she groans softly, reaching up to press her fingertips into her temples.

“I… think so. _Ughhh_. My head _hurts_.”

The canister of purplish fluid enters her field of vision as Varga sets it down where she can see it.

“Betting it was probably this stuff,” she hums, “the spines are coated in it, and you got stuck with a couple, didn’t you?”

The wound under her bracer is undeniably itchy, now that she thinks about it. She gives nodding another chance, and, yet again, regrets it.

“Yeah. Definitely did. It can fire them like arrows.”

The canister vanishes as Varga picks it back up. She can hear the liquid sloshing as the tinker turns it over and over in her hands, studying it.

“I think we’d better come up with some kind of countermeasure before we run into one of these things again. You don’t want that happening in the middle of a fight.”

Squeezing her eyes shut, Aloy buries her cheek in the dust again. Her stomach is starting to turn, as well, now that the effects of the whatever-it-is have gone.

“I don’t want it happening at _all_ , ever again.”

There’s a half-sincere apology in Varga’s voice. Even with her eyes closed, Aloy can picture her shrug. The gleam of impending discovery in her eye.

“Well, we’re going to have to test our countermeasure somehow, so-”

She has the decency to put a conciliatory hand on Aloy’s shoulder when she groans again.


	2. Sword

Ted Faro has never particularly liked visiting B Gym. The people who gather there are _intense_. Especially on alternating weeknights, when the strips come out, and some his colleagues do their best to _stab_ each other.

But he knows it’s where his Chief Scientist will be. And tonight, he needs her advice.

The sound of metal clashing and scraping is audible even from the hall as he approaches, broken by the sound of appreciative shouts and cheers. All around the room, the fist-sized holoprojectors have been hauled out and set up in a fencing configuration, and clashes between paired-off employees, wielding various styles of weapon, are taking place.

A number of the combatants have broken off to watch a pair of fencers going at each other along the length of a strip near the door, glowing in blue. They move almost too quickly to track, lunging forward and slashing at each other, blade skating across blade with a _snap-clack_. There’s a loud buzz as the combatant on the right lunges forward in double-time, striking their opponent across the helmet.

One of the observers, still clad in their mask, laughs lightly.

“Whoo! Did she just get one up on _Sobeck_? Did she put a fucking dent in _The Wall?_ ”

The man standing next to them (a software engineer in the Focus division, he thinks… what’s the guy’s name again?) lets out a low whistle.

“She _did_. This Margo kid is _good_.”

The man’s name clicks abruptly as he speaks, and Ted steps forward, clearing his throat and inclining his head toward the fencing strip, his smile as close to apologetic as he ever lets it get.

“Sorry to interrupt, Bayani. Can I borrow Lis for a minute?”

For a moment, the software engineer looks startled. His shorter, masked companion takes a hasty step back and to the side. Then, both relax, Bayani nodding and reaching down to snatch up his own mask and weapon.

“Sure! I’ve been wanting to take a turn against the new kid, anyway. **HEY**!”

Both combatants stop, masked faces glancing in their direction. Bayani points his sabre toward the one on the left, and she raises her own blade in return, giving her opponent a quick salute before stepping out of bounds and picking her way through the crowd toward him.

As she approaches, she yanks off the mask, shaking out her hair, and grinning, face flushed with exertion.

“What can I do for you, boss?”

It’s her customary greeting, and he smiles, despite himself, firing up his wrist-mounted holodisplay and swiping the relevant email onto the screen before he rotates it toward her for inspection.

“Sorry to interrupt. I’ve got a time-sensitive inquiry about Project Greencoat, and I’m missing a few relevant points, here. Would you happen to have them?”

Her eyes flick back and forth across the display for a minute or two, taking in the message and its list of requests, and she nods, running a gloved hand through her hair.

“Ah. Yeah, I finished working out the last few kinks in the software patch right before I came over here. They’re stress-testing it now, I think. The hardware will take a little longer; we’re machining the prototype for the upgraded unit. I’d estimate… maybe three more weeks? Don’t have my Focus on, or I’d double check. They don’t mix well with swords, you know? Jones’ll have the exact numbers, if you contact xem.”

She gives the fencing mask a little shake, and he nods.

“All right. I’ll let our client know. And, can I just say, that was pretty damn impressive?”

For good measure, he raises an eyebrow, giving her his best winning smile.

As usual, his charm slides right off of her. But she grins anyway, raising the sabre to rest on her shoulder.

“You’ve never seen me in a bout before, have you? I’ve been doing this since I was ten. Mom had to keep me busy with something, she said. This was her solution. Or part of it, anyway. You’ve heard me play the other part at parties.”

With a chuckle and a shake of the head, he gestures her back toward the strip, closing down his wrist display.

“You’re a woman of many talents, Lis.”

“Nah,” she replies, settling the mask back over her face as he turns to weave his way back out of the gym, “just an easily bored kid with a lot of energy.”


	3. Calculation

It grows, slowly, like storm clouds gathering on the horizon.

The Chariot Line itself is, of course, nightmarish. Every feature had been a punch in the gut when she’d first learned about them, back when she was still formally attached to FAS. But seeing the technical specifications, the mechanics, laid out for her to read and understand…

It’s downright horrifying.

 _“It’s worse than that,”_ Ted had said earlier, shrinking back in his desk chair as though he were hoping it would swallow him whole.

Elisabet is beginning to suspect that he’s right. It’s looking pretty damn bad, as it is.

The sun has vanished behind the Wasatch range when she finally ties up the last line of her inquiry and starts the script running, pushing back from the table and rubbing at her eyes with the heels of her hands.

It’s been a long damn day, and she’s ready to get the _hell_ out of here; the familiar surroundings have been dredging up distracting memories, both good and bad. But all draining. With any luck, she’ll be able to wrap things up in a couple of hours, and then get some sleep before presenting her findings to Ted.

The final estimates roll out. She glances over at the display, eyes flicking over the output almost haphazardly…

For a moment, her heart stops. She forgets how to breathe. And then, she’s breathing too fast, knocking the chair over in her haste to get closer to the numbers flickering on the screen.

_That can’t be right… it can’t!_

With shaking hands, she runs the script again. And again. And the answer comes up the same, a second time. And then a third.

Abruptly, she’s on her hands and knees, gasping into the carpet. Some detached part of her insists on turning up its nose and sneering at the pattern (so very _Ted_ ,) but the raging tide threatening to swallow her up drowns it quickly.

It all points to one awful, inevitable conclusion.

Elisabet runs through every calming exercise that every therapist she’s ever seen has taught her. Counts her breaths, alternates as many movements as she can bring herself to make, recites mantras, affirmations…

None of it works. The panic, the desperate despair of it, drags her under with the same inevitability of her conclusions.

She doesn’t know how long it takes for the trembling to stop, or what thought it is that finally helps her turn the corner and claw her way back to a place where she can think again. But she’s _exhausted_ when she pries her face off of the carpet, and shuffles back to the table, leaning her shoulders against it and reaching out to pull the display around to face her.

This time, when she looks over the results of the analysis, she doesn’t feel much of anything. She doesn’t have the energy to.

Global extinction; it’s the end result of every scenario she runs. Every parameter she tweaks. Every possible course of action that she plots. This is something that she can’t fix with a clever design and a handful of machined parts.

This is something that she can’t fix at _all_.

She takes a few moments to gather herself, righting the chair and drawing it back to the table, running through another breathing exercise, before thumbing open her Focus and pulling up Ted’s long-unused contact panel.

He has to know. _Right now._

The call rings three times before he picks it up, and she doesn’t wait for an introduction or greeting.

“Where are you?”

He sounds dazed when he answers, sleep still clinging to the edges of his voice.

“It’s… Lis, do you have any idea what time it is?”

She doesn’t bother dignifying him with an answer, pressing the heels of her hands into the edge of the table as though it’s the last solid thing in the universe.

“We need. To talk. _Now_.”

The seething emotion in her tone penetrates somewhere, because he falters, stammers.

“A-ah, I’ll…”

There are a few beats of silence, and she’s just drawing in a breath to demand that he get his ass over here, right now, Ted, when he answers, appropriately subdued.

“All right. I’ll be there in half an hour.”

He hangs up the call without further comment, and the rest of her scraped-together strength drains. She flops heavily into the chair, and buries her face in her hands.

_Fifteen months until the world ends. And there’s no way to stop it._

Three deep, calming breaths in and out. In and out. In and out. And then she rises again, and returns to the task at hand.

_Let’s see what our other options are._


	4. Tribe

She can hear the cheers rising from the ridge, from the Maizelands below, from the walls of Meridian, as she stands on the Alight’s slopes.

It’s over.

Part of her is still trembling at the _closeness_ of it all. At the horror of skidding to a halt at the base of the Spire and watching the seething red waves of HADES’ transmission spooling out across the sky.

_If I’d been unconscious even ten minutes longer…_

But she _wasn’t_. She _hasn’t_ failed. And now… it’s over.

Closing her eyes, she lets as much of the tension and worry as she can drain out of her in one long sigh. Then, turning back toward the battlefield, she searches out the faces of her friends.

Varl, Erend and Talanah are arrayed across the ledge, catching their breath, stowing weapons, peering over the edge at the crowd gathering below. Behind them, Sona is struggling her way up the rise, with Aratak at her heels. She can hear Teb’s voice shouting her name from somewhere further down the path.

They all _look_ as exhausted, as sore, as Aloy _feels_. But their faces, begrimed and blood-streaked as they are, are alight with smiles.

And she finds herself smiling too, shoulders shaking with quiet, relieved laughter at the sight of them all as she opens her arms and steps forward to meet them.

Her tribe surrounds her. Folds her into their embrace. She doesn’t resist, bringing her arms up and around as many of them as she can and nestling her forehead and chin into the tangle of them.

Because it’s _over_. And just this once, just for a little while…

She can afford to let herself rest.


	5. Perform

The name of the recording, when her Focus picks up on it, is **“I fucking TOLD you, sibski; get a few drinks in her and the guitar comes out.”**

Aloy doesn’t understand… _all_ of those words. But she scans it eagerly; any data about the world of the Old Ones, especially data found _here_ , is data that she wants to gather.

The room lights up with a hologram recording quite abruptly, and she starts back a step, passing straight through the image of a man with a squarish pair of spectacles. He doesn’t notice, of course, swishing the liquid in his long-stemmed glass and laughing to a tall woman standing to his left, with a little plate full of delicacies in her hands.

There’s a party or celebration of some kind going on, she realizes; tables full of similar long-stemmed glasses and plates loaded down with a veritable feast have been set against each wall. The space between them is full of people mingling, talking, laughing, and enjoying one another’s company.

And she recognizes the figure who walks into the recording up on the now-dilapidated stage at the head of the room as soon as she appears; it’s Elisabet Sobeck.

She’s younger, in this recording, than she was in the data that Aloy and Sylens had uncovered at Zero Dawn Headquarters and at Faro Automated Solutions. And for once, she’s _smiling_ ; she looks happy in a way that she never has in the recordings leading up to Zero Day.

Stepping up to the device set at the front of the stage and reaching out to adjust it, Elisabet leans in toward it to speak. Her voice booms out over the room, twice as loud as though she’d shouted, but at a perfectly normal, speaking tone.

“Hello, hello! Thanks for being here, all, especially our colleagues who rode all the way up from Scripps for the launch. We’re more than happy to have you with us.”

Something is slung over her shoulder on a richly embroidered strap, and she brings it around to her front, now, cradling it in her arms; a stringed instrument, with a rounded, figure-eight body and long neck, tipped with several pegs that stick out to either side.

“We have… a bit of a tradition, here at Miriam, when we all get together like this to celebrate the launch of a project that’s going to pull us apart for a while. It dates back to when it was just Esteban, Quinn and I, sitting on packing crates in the new office after hours. We just sort of kept doing it, and now it’s taken on a life of its own. I think to skip it might be inviting a curse, at this point.”

That draws a scattering of laughter out of the crowd.

Reaching for one of the pegs, she plucks at the strings, twisting and adjusting them as she listens for something that Aloy can’t quite place, finally nodding to herself, satisfied by what she hears.

“Anyway… if you know the words… feel free to join the chorus. If you don’t?”

Her fingers move over the instrument’s strings, coaxing the beginnings of a melody out of it, and she shrugs, carefully.

“Feel free to join in anyway.”

And then, leaning forward into the amplifying device, she begins to sing;

**_Kind friends and companions, come join me in rhyme  
Come lift up your voices in chorus with mine  
Come lift up your voices all grief to refrain  
For we may or might never all meet here again_ **

The vast majority of the room replies, adding their voices to hers, some of them lifting their glasses, others joining arms and rocking back and forth, or tapping feet along to the rhythm of Elisabet’s strumming.

**_Here’s a health to the company and one to my lass_  
Let us drink and be merry all out of one glass  
Let us drink and be merry all grief to refrain  
For we may or might never all meet here again**

It’s a haunting, melancholy tune, rolling back and forth between singer and audience, speaking of partings, and well-wishes, and warmth and sorrow all at once, and it’s spellbinding. Again, the words don’t all make sense. But they don’t have to; Aloy can _feel_ the meaning behind them. She finds herself bobbing her head in time to the voices of the long-dead crowd.

The song comes to a close, and for a moment, a hush falls over the room. Then, Elisabet raps a hand lightly against the instrument’s body, producing a little jangle from the strings, breaking the spell. 

“All of my best to those of you taking off on the R/V _Far Traveler_ tomorrow, and to those of you heading out to the Himalayas next week. And, to all of the rest of you…”

She bows at the waist with a playful little flourish of the wrist.

“Good night. Catch you tomorrow.”

And with that, she turns, striding away out of the frame, and with an enthusiastic scattering of applause, and well-wishes returned, the recording comes to an end.


	6. Mess

The heart of a Thunderjaw is fairly easy to remove.

The lens? That’s harder. Tucked away behind the optics, in the center of the head, it takes a practiced hand to slip it out without shattering it against the hard components within.

A practiced hand, arm, head, and _shoulders_ , the way Aloy does it.

She crawls practically into the thing’s jaws, fishing around behind the mandibles as she mutters to herself, discarding bits and pieces as she goes. When she finally emerges with the prize clutched between her hands, she’s coated in a thin sheen of machine oil, and a splash of coolant has plastered itself up the left side of her face.

Talanah just _stares_.

“What?” asks her Thrush, wiping at her eyes with an equally filthy sleeve, and managing only to smear the mess all over her face.

“Nothing,” she replies, quickly. Too quickly. “Just, uhh… glad you got the lens out all right. Good… umm… good work.”

-

“I told you I could get it out,” Aloy insists as she backs her way out of the Bellowback’s ruined transport sack, its slimy heart clutched in her hands, “You just have to go in through the back end, since the snout is so narrow.”

“You, uhh,” warns Varl, taking in the spatters of green that have covered her in patches from head to toe, matting down her hair in places, and dripping from the ends of her braids, “You’ve got a little Blaze on your…”

He makes a head-to-foot gesture, shifting back a bit on his foot as though trying to get a better look at her.

“…everywhere.”

As if noticing the mess for the first time, she wipes a blot of it off of her nose, watching it drip off of her fingers and into the grass.

“Oh. Yeah. Guess I should keep away from campfires for a while, shouldn’t I?”

She twists about to examine the green stains on her tunic, pressing her nose to the one closest to her shoulder and inhaling sharply.

“It smells kind of strange. A little bit like Ridge-wood, when you snap the stem off. But… also a little bit like turned earth? How do you think they make it? The machines, I mean?”

All he can do is shake his head at that, laughing as he takes the heart and wipes it clean on the grass.

“Have I told you lately that you’re definitely not like other Nora?”

“Not lately, no,” she replies, grinning, “but I think I’ve heard you say something like that before once or twice. C'mon, we’ve got parts to deliver.”

A moment later, she licks at her teeth, and turns to spit a Blaze-tinged mouthful to the side.

“ _Ptheth!_ It _tastes_ a little like Ridge-wood, too.”

He decides not to ask how she knows what Ridge-wood tastes like.

-

“Got the core,” Aloy announces, wiggling her way out from in between two of the Behemoth’s force loaders, both hands full with the spoils of her harvest, “and some of those crystal-braided cables you use in the cannons, too." 

She’s collected quite an accumulation of engine grease, as well; the gritty stuff has plastered itself up the side of her face, sticking one of the smaller braids to her cheek, and is beginning to mingle with the sweat in the creases of her neck, staining them darkly.

"You sure did,” Petra replies, accepting both machine parts and grease without complaint, and turning them over in her hands, giving her nose a brief itch and spreading the wealth to her own face in turn, “Nice work. Think you can make your way in past the crate holders and get the heart out, too, while I check in with the others?”

“I think so,” is Aloy’s answer as she reaches up to tug her stuck braid loose, “but _that_ might be a little bit messy.”


	7. Disability

The tension in the chamber is so thick that Aloy feels almost as if she could slice through it with a spearpoint.

Erend is pacing back and forth, clenching and unclenching his fists, while Avad is relatively still, seated on one of the low settes with his fingers laced together, knuckles white with tension. She’s a leap removed from the situation, but their anxiety is catching, and she finds herself perched beside the Sun-King with her knees drawn up to her chest.

The stress reaches a fever pitch when the royal physician finally makes an appearance. The man looks utterly weary, shoulders slouched as he ascends the stairs into the audience chamber. But there’s a little smile on his face, alongside the exhaustion.

Avad rises to his feet, one hand fluttering out toward the healer.

“Is she…?”

The man dips into the requisite bow before nodding, the smile deepening as he meets each of their eyes in turn.

“Yes. And I believe she intends to stay that way.”

All three of them let out an explosive sigh, almost in unison, exchanging grins, and looks of relief. It takes the healer several pointed throat-clearings to call them back to order, and he removes his headdress as he speaks, mopping at his shaved pate with a cloth that he pulls from inside the sleeve of his robe.

“We weren’t able to save her leg. And there’s still no telling what the long-term effects of prolonged exposure to Dervhal’s sonic device will be.”

With a little shake of his head, Avad drifts across the chamber to stand by Erend’s side. The conviction on his face is as hard as machine-steel.

“It doesn’t matter. If she’s going to live? We’ll figure it out. Whatever it takes.”

Erend gives him a clap on the shoulder that staggers him forward a step, and knocks his headdress askew. Several of the guards, stationed at the entrances to the pavilion, start in alarm. But Avad just grins, nudging it back into place, and returns the gesture, clapping his own hand over the Vanguardsman’s.

“We damn well will!”

-

When she next returns to Meridian, there’s a new presence in the palace.

Aloy has no doubt as to who she is, from the moment she lays eyes on the woman; she has the same square jaw and strong shoulders as Erend, and when she looks up, setting the leaves down on the table in front of her, and smiles, the resemblance becomes even more clear.

“Let’s see; red hair, Nora garb, and a warrior’s eyes… you must be Aloy.”

Approaching the table, Aloy leans forward, resting her elbows on its surface and givng a little nod.

“That’s me. And you’re Ersa, right? Glad to see you back on your feet.”

Raising a brow, the Oseram woman gestures to her single boot, stretched out beneath the table. Her other leg, ending just above the knee and still swathed in bandages, is propped up on a low, cushion-topped stool.

“Feet? Nope. You’ve got one too many in there.”

The joke catches Aloy off guard, and she lets out a little chuckle before she can stop herself. Judging by Ersa’s grin, though, it’s just the reaction she was hoping for.

“Not really _on_ them, either, per se,” she continues, “I’ve been having trouble keeping my balance. Something broken in here, courtesy of Dervhal.”

She indicates the side of her head with a vague, sweeping hand motion.

“We’re still working on a way for me to move around the place without having to be upright and dizzy. Until we do, though, I’m… trying to stay in one place, as much as I can.”

“Marad says you’re working as a military advisor, now… got any ideas for the defense of the Spire?”

Picking up her sheath of leaves, Ersa gives it a little flap, sending them rustling together.

“A couple, yeah. I tangled with some of these bastards during the Liberation. Getting to put them in their place a second time is a _treat_. It’s not the same as having a hammer in my hands, but it’s good work. And with any luck, I can help keep you all safe out there. ”

As she sets her work back down, she glances about, before beckoning Aloy in closer with a conspiratorial little wave.

“Still… crack a few Eclipse skulls for me once the fighting starts, will you?“

Aloy favors her with a wicked little grin.

"Oh, it would be my _pleasure_. I’ll tell them you sent me.”

Leaning back in her seat, Ersa barks out a laugh.

“ _Hah!_ I think we’re going to be good friends, Aloy. Come back alive, so we can make that happen?”

As she straightens up, Aloy gives the Oseram woman a firm nod; she’s definitely looking forward to that prospect.

“I’ll do my best.”


	8. Guilt

In dreams, Aloy sees their faces over and over again.

Usually, it’s a melancholy occasion; they surround her with sad smiles, reaching out to her, but never quite touching. She can see the warmth in their eyes, the well-wishes and the love. But from across a gulf that none of them can cross.

She often wakes from these dreams with damp cheeks.

But on other nights, the sadness ebbs, and is replaced by coldness. Bitterness. And then… _anger_. On the very worst nights, one of them _does_ cross the gap and wraps their hands around her throat, demanding that she join them. That she pay for her survival in _blood_.

Tonight is one of those nights, and she comes awake with a jolt, gasping for breath, hands scrabbling at her neck in an attempt to claw away a grip that isn’t there.

 _Just a dream_ , she reassures herself, over and over again, sitting up and burying her face in her hands, fingers tangling in among her braids, _just a dream_.

But she still heaves herself to her feet and paces down to the edge of the water, pulling off her boots, and setting them well above the reach of the tide. She wades into the surf. The surging waves lap at her ankles, and sand scatters over her feet, carried in by the back and forth of the water, burying them bit by bit.

Closing her eyes, she listens to the sigh of the water as it moves in and out, taking, giving. Breathes along in time with the surge of the tide.

_I’m sorry._

In her mind’s eye, she can see their faces, as they’d been in the dream; cold with fury. Curled into snarls of rage. An enthusiastic wave climbs her ankle, and she shudders.

_It’s not fair. It’s not. But…_

_But I won’t forget you._

Bit by bit, the faces in her mind soften. Lose the hard, bitter edges. Snarls become gentle smiles. She forces herself to smooth her hands out of the fists they’ve curled themselves into. To keep breathing. 

To remember them the way she _wants_ to, not the way her nightmares dictate.

_I’ll carry you with me, wherever I go._

_And I’ll remember what you gave me. I won’t let it go to waste._

Bit by bit, she separates dream and memory, visiting each ghost in turn. By the time she digs her feet out of the sand and begins the march back up the dunes to her makeshift camp, she’s laid them back to rest for the night.

It still hurts. It will probably _always_ hurt, she thinks. 

But for now…

They’re a little bit lighter to carry.


	9. Young

“Mama?”

Without looking up from the tax forms spread across the table, Rachel Sobeck reaches out to punch a few numbers into the calculator, and then chew at the end of her pen as she considers the results.

“Yes, darling?”

The screen door swings shut as her daughter pushes her way into the kitchen. She notes, with satisfaction, that this time, Elisabet takes a moment to wipe her boots on the mat.

“Arlo’s foot is hurt. We’ve gotta fix it.”

It takes all of Rachel’s self-control not to groan. Arlo again. The damn rooster has probably bitten off more than he can chew, attacking a particularly threatening stump or chasing one of the goats around, and pulled a muscle, or something.

With a sigh, she pushes the calculator away, shuffling the forms into order, looks up…

…and freezes.

Elisabet is standing in the middle of the kitchen with Arlo cradled in her arms.

It’s _horrifying_. Arlo is, without a doubt, the terror of Sobeck Ranch, ruling the roost with an iron claw, quick to leap and drive his spurs into anything that moves without his say-so. He’s given her a couple of scars, in his time, and now, here he is, with his vicious beak just inches from her child’s eyes.

Rising to her feet, one hand outstretched, Rachel does her best to keep her voice steady, belying the panic that’s starting to claw at her chest.

“Bits…? Elisabet? Listen to me _very_ closely, honey. I want you to crouch down, slowly, and put the rooster on the floor-”

With a scoff, the little girl gives her a sardonic look that’s far too adult for a child of seven.

“Arlo isn’t gonna _hurt_ me, Mama. He knows I want to help him. He’ll behave.”

To Rachel’s astonishment, she’s right; the cantankerous bird is not only holding still in Elisabet’s arms. He’s _cuddling_ with her, snuggling his head against her shoulder. His beady eyes are fixed on Rachel with baleful intent.

“He’s a _gentleman_ ,” she insists.

All Rachel can do is laugh breathily, shaking her head and pulling off her glasses to massage the bridge of her nose.

“Bits, you’re either going to save the world, or end it outright.”

“No,” her daughter replies, carrying the rooster past her into the bathroom, “I’m gonna fix Arlo’s foot.”


	10. Chapter 10

“Where are you sleeping tonight?” asks Talanah, as they descend the steps of the Hunter’s Lodge. Night is beginning to fall over Meridian, and the merchants in the surrounding alleys and squares are beginning to pack in their wares. The sound of voices raised in song spills over the sides of the Sun-Ring, as the priests complete their farewell to the red sky in the west.

Aloy hasn’t considered this, yet, really; dealing with Ahsis has taken up the majority of her attention and energy, today, even with Talanah’s help.

Now that it’s been brought to her attention, though, she can’t help but sigh; she’s too far behind her time to set up anything elaborate, now. It’s looking like a jerky-and-no-fire kind of night.

“I guess I’ll just find a place to set up camp outside the walls.”

Talanah gives her a wry look, shaking her head firmly.

“Absolutely not. Come stay with me.”

That catches her off guard, and she actually stumbles to a halt in the middle of the roadway, drawing a few dirty looks from passers-by as they’re forced to detour around her.

“With you?”

Talanah nods, gesturing toward the path winding away from the Lodge to the left.

“Yeah! Plenty of room at the Khane Padish residence. Too much room, really.”

A shadow passes over her friend’s face for the briefest of moments, almost too quickly to catch. Almost.

But she lets it go as her Hawk returns to the pitch, spreading her arms beguilingly.

“It’ll be fun! We can pick something up for dinner before the stalls close up, stay up ‘till moonhigh, swap hunting stories… you can sleep in a _bed_ for once, and not have to comb a Trampler’s worth of dust out of your hair in the morning?”

That’s the one that finally wears down her resolve, for some reason, and she laughs, reaching over to give Talanah a playful little shove.

“OK, OK, you had me at 'no dust.’ Lead the way, then.”


	11. Enhance

She recognizes the voice that calls her name in a mockingly jubilant tone the moment she hears it, and it takes all of her self-control not to groan and bang her head against the desk.

_Oh boy. Give me the strength. And the patience._

Without turning around, or acknowledging his arrival in any way, she flattens out her voice, keeping it as neutral and cool as possible.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Tate?”

Instead of answering the question, he leans over the back of her chair, peering at the lines of code on the holographic display.

“That doesn’t look like your style of notation. You cribbin’ someone else’s work for the alpha build?”

With a noncommittal noise, she does her best to block him out, examining the next chunk of code, and adding in a few more lines and notations of her own before moving on.

“It’s some of the base code used for VAST SILVER.”

Tate lets out a low whistle.

“Always did wonder what happened to that thing. They said ‘contained,’ but that was just what they told the public, right?”

She’s not surprised that he knows the truth; it’s in his realm of expertise, after all.

“Yeah. It disappeared not too long after its recapture.”

He takes a seat on the edge of her desk, uninvited, crossing one leg over the other and continuing to scrutinize the code.

“Courtesy of the hacker calling themselves 'Soteria.’ Had a good laugh over that one, I did. It warms the cold cockles of my heart, thinkin’ about all them MOCKINGBIRD types scrambling around like chickens with their heads cut off.”

Raising an eyebrow, he tips his head toward her.

“I’m guessin’ you’ve sniffed them out and recruited them for this dog and pony show, too?”

Still keeping her eyes on her work, she lets out a soft snort.

“I found you, didn’t I? Yeah. They’re on-staff. And they brought what’s left of VAST SILVER along at my request.”

Resting his chin on his hand, Tate waves a hand in a vague, circular motion toward the screen.

“So, you’re usin’ the residual code of an AI that went rogue as the basis for another AI that’s supposed’t direct the reconstitution of life on Earth?”

The skeptical tone rubs her entirely the wrong way, and she has to fight back a groan. This is exactly why she hasn’t told anyone else about this particular part of the process; Tate’s reaction is, she feels, fairly mild, as far as the possibilities go.

And it still _irks_ her.

She knows that she doesn’t have to justify herself. But she tries anyway, punching at the keyboard with more force than is strictly necessary.

“It had good bones. And what constitutes a 'rogue’ AI, anyway? The reasons that it did what it did… it’s easy to see them in retrospect. I can work with it. Make it better.”

_Give it a second chance, now that we know better._

He makes a wordless, dubious noise, turning his palms upward.

“You’re the expert.”

For some reason, she finds this the most irritating part of the visit to date. Finally turning toward him, she puts on her best Withering Manager Look.

“Look, did you have a question? Or do you need something?”

It proves to be wholly ineffective, which she should have expected; if Travis Tate were the sort to be cowed by authority, then he probably wouldn’t be here, in honesty.

“Nahhhh. Just visiting. Code’s compiling, so what else am I gonna do?”

She must look like she’s about to burst, because he raises his hands, hopping down from the desk and backing away from the workspace with a chuckle.

“I can see you’re busy, though. Maybe I’ll go pester your team for a while. See if I can figure out which one’ve 'em’d be the type to spring a crazy AI out of the clink.”

Allowing a shade of the irritation eating up her insides to creep into her voice, she reaches up to massage her temples.

“ _Don’t_ do that. You _have_ to know already that 'Soteria’ was me.”

Tate’s lazy grin would put a hyena to shame.

“Sure did, Lizzy. Just wanted to hear you admit it out loud.”

With a playful salute, he spins around sharply on his heel and slouches out, leaving her to her work.


	12. North

The wind comes howling down from the north that night, out of Ban-Ur, and in the morning, the Embrace is covered in a fresh coat of snow.

“Don’t go too far,” Rost warns as she scrambles off of the sledge and into the powder straight up to her knees, “Stay within shouting distance.”

Calling out an affirmative, Aloy begins to thrash her way up the hill, through the drifts. The first snow of the season has always been her favorite; as the winter wears on, the snow will become an annoyance, blocking paths, burying passes, and leaving them with little to do. Right now, it’s still new, and seeing all of the places that she likes to play and explore covered in a blanket of white, trying to pick out familiar shapes and objects, is a fresh kind of fun.

She follows a set of bird tracks, for a while, until they end in a set of wingprints in the snow. Clambers up the snow-clad branches of a pine tree and peers out over the valley until she spots Rost, at work with the axe, chopping firewood for the cabin. Hops down from the branches and goes searching for treasures hidden under the snow.

As she’s straightening up with a buried piece of bark in her hands, studying the patterns of ice that have grown in the cracks, something hits her shoulder with a loud _whashhhhhp!_ A spray of cold lances up the side of her face, and she yips in alarm, dropping her find and whirling around.

One of the children from the village, a dark-skinned little girl with a single blue marking in a fang-like shape on her face, is standing atop a nearby pile of boulders with her arm outstretched.

Without saying a word, she bends down, scooping up another handful of snow and beginning to clump it between her palms. Her eyes flick between her creation and Aloy as she rolls it carefully. Too carefully. And for far too long, her eyes continuing to dart back and forth.

For a moment, Aloy just stares, puzzled. Why does the girl keep looking at her? Does she want something? Other than to pelt the Motherless Outcast with cold, stinging snow?

She doesn’t think she likes that idea much.

Even though she knows that Rost would scold her for it, tell her that she can’t, and that it’s against he rules, she reaches down, scoops up and packs her own chunk of snow, and flings it in the Nora girl’s direction.

That turns out to be exactly what she was waiting for; with a yelp of alarm, the girl backs up, but not quite in time. The snow _pfffs_ off of her sleeve, and she grins, raising her own projectile high over her head and beginning to wind up the throw with an exaggerated motion.

_Oh!_

Now, Aloy gets it; they can’t speak to each other…

But they don’t have to speak to play. She reaches for another handful of snow, scrambling for cover as she goes, and the girl’s missile goes sailing over her head to spatter against the ground where she’d been standing just moments before.

Back and forth, they dart around the rocks, shrieking and giggling, flinging handfuls of snow at each other, and setting up little ambushes. At one point, the girl leaps for her, aiming to tackle her into the snow, and she dodges out of the way, but trips over a hidden root, and they both end up sprawled out in the powder, laughing breathlessly.

All too soon, she hears Rost shouting her name.

Hauling herself out of the snow and shaking powder from her hair, she gives the Nora girl one last grin. Her playmate returns the smile, hurling one final chunk of snow in parting.

“Did you find anything interesting?” Rost asks, as she clambers back onto the sledge, perching on top of the pile of timber he’s chopped and nudging one of the logs into place as it starts to slide off the back.

“Yes,” she replies.

But she doesn’t elaborate, and for the rest of the day, curling up in front of the hearth to doze doesn’t seem like such a boring prospect after all.


	13. Classroom

Her mother is very solemn as the principal lays out the story, as it happened in the eyes of the teachers, nodding along, shooting little glances out of the corner of her eye at her daughter, who’s doing her best not to squirm in the chair beside her.

She’s not really listening to what the administrator has to say, anyway; yes, fighting is bad. Throwing the first punch is doubly bad, even if it’s in defense of another student. Yes, she broke the rules. Yes, she’s in trouble.

Yes, she would do it all again. In a heartbeat, absolutely. Why bother listening to the lecture when she’s already finished processing it all?

Her mother shepherds her out of the office at the end of the principal’s speech, with promises to do something about it.

It’s not until they’re back in the battered old electric pickup, gliding back down the road toward the center of town, that Rachel Sobeck finally speaks, keeping her gaze on the road ahead of them.

“So, Bits…”

For half an instant, Elisabet’s breath freezes in her throat; the tone is so carefully neutral that there’s no telling what’s about to follow.

And then her mother turns a sly grin toward her, one that shows absolutely all of her teeth, and the fear evaporates, and she’s grinning, too, despite the ache of both a bloody nose and a suspension from school.

“…where are we going for your celebratory dinner, tonight?”


	14. Unfair

By 8:30 PM, she’s finally spent her rage.

Dropping a trail of equipment as she makes her way from door to couch, Elisabet flings herself down with a weary sigh, throwing an arm over her eyes and taking a moment to just _breathe_.

For the first time since the disaster of this morning’s press conference, her head is finally, blessedly _empty_ , the anger and hurt mostly expended through the process of thrashing herself to her physical limits.

Mostly; there’s still an ember of the earlier heat, pulsing in the depths of her stomach. But that, she thinks, isn’t going to go away any time soon.

The Focus buzzes again in the front pocket of her bag, and she grimaces.

_I bet I know who that is. And I’m going to have to pick up eventually._

But not right now.

The wherewithal to cook escapes her, so she settles for a protein shake and an apple, eaten absently while leaning against the kitchen counter and staring out the apartment window at the city lights beyond.

It’s not until she’s showered and stowed all of her gear away that she finally slips the Focus back on, and begins sorting through a list of notifications so long that it makes her head ache just to think of the bottom.

There are five missed calls from Ted, all in increasing flavors of desperate. Three interview requests, all of which are summarily declined. A worried message from her mother (“I heard the news, Bits. Are you all right?”) to which she dashes off a quick reply, apologizing for the late response and promising to call in the morning. A slew of angry, sympathetic messages from colleagues in firm agreement with her stance. An equally long, if not longer slew of sheepishly apologetic messages from colleagues who don’t.

These, she moves directly into the Trash; she has nothing to say to them.

She’s almost to the bottom of the list when the call comes in, and for a moment, she almost lets it ring. But her cooler (sort of) head prevails, in the end, and, with a sigh, she reaches out to accept it; the confrontation is inevitable, and she’d rather have it here than in the office, where so much more could go wrong.

“Ted,” she intones, keeping her voice as carefully neutral as possible.

From the other end of the line comes a sigh that’s half annoyance and half relief.

“Lis, where the hell have you _been_?”

“Climbing. In Provo.”

His voice goes flat with disbelief.

“Provo.”

Swallowing hard, she runs a hand through her hair, keeping her tone as steady as she can manage.

“Yep. And fencing at B Gym after that.”

He goes silent for a long time. When he speaks, it’s in a soft, almost cajoling voice.

“You just _bolted_ this morning, Lis. I needed you there-”

The spark of anger flares again, and she rises to her feet, beginning to pace the length of the living room.

“Oh. You needed me. But not enough to tell me what was going on.”

He’s made a mistake, and they both know it.

“Lis-”

Even though it’s a voice call, and he can’t see the gesture, she makes a sharp, chopping motion with her hand as she cuts him off with a little snarl.

“No! Don’t you ‘Lis’ me, Ted! You reassigned half my team! Cancelled six of our upcoming projects! And I had to hear about it in the middle of a crowded room, in _front of the damn press!_ ”

“I… mishandled the situation, yes, but you-”

To her irritation, he hasn’t lost the soothing, diplomatic edge to his voice yet.

_Does he think that he can salvage this, somehow? Really?_

Not about to let him finish, she whirls on her heel, stabbing a finger into the empty air.

“You _know_ how I feel about this, Ted! You know what my stance on military applications is, and you’re gutting my department-”

This time, he’s the one cutting her off, in a glacial voice that, admittedly, trips her up for a moment, shocking her into silence.

“Enough. It’s time to grow up, Lis.”

She hates the way her voice comes out as an outraged squeak, at least an octave higher than she’d like it. But the indignity of it!

“ _Excuse me!?_ ”

 _Is he trying to patronize me?_ Me _!?_

Ted laughs derisively on the other end of the line.

“What? Did you _really_ think that we were going to spend the rest of our damn lives building carbon scrubbers and water filters? Green robotics is a field with an expiration date. One that’s fast-approaching. It’s time to move on.”

For the second time in as many minutes, she finds herself at a momentary loss for words, breathing in ragged little gasps of fury. She has to pinch the bridge of her nose and remind herself to slow down before she finally trusts herself to speak again.

“You really don’t know anything about gardening, do you, Ted? It’s not enough just to plant the seeds. You have to tend them if you want them to grow.”

A scoff. She can almost see the dismissive wave of his hand.

“The forest gets by just fine.”

_He hasn’t learned anything from this._

The thought hits her like the whip-flash blow of a sabre strike during a bout, and she almost laughs out loud.

_Ten years, all of those projects, and he hasn’t learned a damn thing._

It’s a thought that should shock her. Should shake her to her core. But… somehow, it doesn’t. Somehow, she’s always known that it would end like this.

Ted’s always been more interested in the showy blossoms than the roots and trunks. That’s always been her purview. It’s the reason they’ve worked so well together, shoring each other up, as business partners. As friends.

And now, it’s the reason driving them apart.

“All right. Fine. If this is the direction you’re going to take the company in, then…”

She hesitates only for a moment; she knows what she wants to say. Knows what she has to say. But it still takes an effort to force it out.

“Then it’s not one I can follow. Consider this my official notice of resignation.”

It’s Ted’s voice that comes out as a squeak, this time, and she allows herself a moment to feel smug.

“Your… what?”

Now that the words are loose in the world between them, her confidence grows. Crossing back to the couch, she takes a seat, crossing her legs beneath her.

“You heard me, Ted.”

He’s spluttering on the other end of the line, at a loss for words for the first time she can ever remember.

“You… you can’t just-”

She cuts him off again, more gently, this time; the decision’s been made, and with each passing second, she’s more and more at peace with it. More and more convinced that it’s the right thing to do.

“I can. And I just did. Effective noon tomorrow, local time. I’ll send the paperwork over to HR in the morning. And I can be packed up and gone by Tuesday, at the latest.”

For a long time, he’s silent. She’s just beginning to think that this is it, that he’s going to let a partnership, a friendship of nearly a decade go by just hanging up on her. But the icy tone that had so shocked her earlier returns, and she can hear a chair being pushed out as he stands.

“Fine. I’ll post a hiring notice. Find a better fit for the position. Someone with more _vision_.”

His parting barb finds no purchase on the glassy surface of her resolve, and she nods to no one in particular.

“Goodbye, Ted.”

Thumbing the call off, she curls back into the couch cushions and watches the lights wink off all across campus, and the city beyond. Watches the moon sail over the tops of the Wasatch range, up to its zenith and down the sky again.

Then, finally, she opens her email client, and begins to draft a message. By the time the sun rises over the mountains, it’s ready to go.

–  
Mon 4/14/2048 8:30 AM  
From: esobeck@FAS.com  
To: STAFF_ALL@FAS.com  
Subject: Happy Trails

_Hello All,_

_I know how quickly the rumor mill in this place works, so I’m just going to come out and say it. Effective today, at 12 PM local time, I am resigning my position as Chief Scientist of Faro Automated Solutions._

_While I have greatly enjoyed my time here at FAS, the company’s decision to branch out into military applications is not one that I can personally support. It is my firm belief that our focus should remain on the use of technological advancements to improve the lives of our fellow human beings, and to foster stewardship of the natural world, reversing the mistakes of the past, and looking toward the future. The Board does not share this belief. Thus, our parting of the ways._

_As humans, we look toward the horizon with every action that we take, seeking to pass what’s important to us over its edge to the next generation. I urge you to consider your legacy, what it is that you want to pass over that horizon, and to take steps accordingly._

_It has been an honor to work alongside you all these past ten years. When I say that you are some of the best and brightest engineers and scientists of our age, it is with total sincerity. Should you need it, my door will always be open to you._

_All my best,_

_E. Sobeck_


	15. Style

“I am absolutely not wearing this,” Elisabet declares, draping the garment bag over the back of the couch and leveling a glare in Ted’s direction, “Absolutely not. I’ll go home and change into something I’ve already got.”

“What,” asks Ted with a half-derisive snort, from his irreverent position sprawled across the cushions, “You mean the one suit you own? That’s not gonna cut it for this one, Lis. Not with all of the major holonet news sources there, and all of the major networks, to boot.”

She actually _does_ own just the one, but she’s not about to let him have that on her; no one in her field has ever given a damn about her lack of style, or the fact that she seems to wear the same “uniform” to conferences, over and over again.

Especially not after the kegs come out, at the end of the day.

“There’s nothing wrong with what I’ve already got. Absolutely no need to keep switching things up and complicating them.”

Pushing himself forward into a more upright position and steepling his fingers, Ted lets out a long-suffering sigh.

“There is. I keep telling you, Lis, presentation is half the battle. You’d be a real world-beater if you stopped being so stubborn and just absorbed the lesson.”

She leans directly into the stubbornness as she keeps the glare leveled in his direction.

“Presentation is your job.”

Standing and snatching up the bag, he rattles it at her, raising an eyebrow and baiting her with a challenging smile.

“Exactly. So, let me do my job. Just try it on. If you hate the way it looks, then you don’t have to wear it. But give me a chance, here. Please?”

She can’t resist the lure, and he knows it; it bores its way straight into the competitive part of her, and puts down roots. Snatching up the bag with a growl of “Fine,” she vanishes into the attached bathroom.

When she reemerges in the synthsilk dress and blazer, she finds it hard to meet his eye, studying the branching leaf patterns embroidered into the hem of the skirt instead. And, sure enough, when she does look up, he has an irritatingly smug look plastered over his face.

Yes, it irks her to admit it, but it does suit her.

With a terse sigh, she tosses the empty bag and her wadded up khakis onto the couch.

“OK. All right, fine. You win. But just this once.”

With a grin that suggests that he highly doubts this will be a one-time victory, he makes a gesture over his shoulder toward the office door.

“Sure. Now. Let’s go over our talking points one last time on the way over. And… maybe afterward, we can give that new Lebanese place downtown a try? My treat.”

It’s a very deliberate olive branch, and one she’s only too happy to take, for now.

After all, her pride is no match for an offering of hummus and kibbeh.


	16. Water

The first time Aloy dives with the converter, she still holds her breath as long as she can. Some part of her, despite all of the marvels she’s uncovered, all of the things she’s seen, is still terrified that it’s not going to work. That she’ll suck in a lungful of briny water, and wind up dead and drowned among the sunken wreckage lining the seafloor.

Eventually, though, she can’t hold out any longer; releasing a cloud of bubbles from around the edges of the mask, she takes a tentative breath… of air.

It’s not quite the same as breathing on land; pulling in oxygen takes more effort down here, almost like drinking the last drops from a waterskin, and there’s a distinctly salty smell and taste to the converted air. But the adjustment is quick enough, and the difficulties pale in comparison to what’s laid out before her.

Long, green stalks wave lazily in the current, leaves streaming about in the direction of the water’s flow. In and among them dart schools of silvery little fish, flashing with alarm as she kicks closer to examine the plants, wrapping a slimy frond around her hand and running her fingers up and down the stem.

“Kelp,” says the Focus when she flicks it on to scan the area, and “Anchovy,” and also “Sea Perch” of a larger fish, drifting a distance away among the waving strands. Turning her gaze downward toward the bottom of the stalk (the roots?) she picks up “Sea Urchin,” and “Brittle Star” and a number of other small shapes, hiding in and among the rocks of the seabed.

Kicking toward the collection of shapes, she scoops up the one labeled “Brittle Star,” holding it up to study it more closely. It wiggles in her hands, crawling away from her on five spindly legs arrayed around a central disc. The “Sea Urchin” turns out to be spiny, and she doesn’t bother with trying to touch it.

It’s meant to be a quick, exploratory dive, to test the breather’s function. To make sure that a thousand years in storage haven’t led to any damage that might strand her at depth without a reliable source of air. But she stays down far longer than she’d initially planned, turning over rocks, fishing out little treasures, like shells, bits of coral, and tiny relics of the Old Ones that have been washed here and there by the tide.

She only turns and kicks for the surface again when the stinging in her eyes becomes too prominent to ignore.

First dive; resounding success.

She can hardly wait for the second one.


End file.
